Recent Reviews
DVD Review: Clive Barker's The Plague
By John Marrone
Sep 8, 2006, 11:41

Directed by:  Hal Masonberg
Running Time:  88 minutes
Body Count:  27

- trailer (windows media)

A mysterious and unexplained plague sweeps the world, and one morning, children everywhere under the age of 9 slip into irreversible comas.  Or so they thought.  For ten years, the children of the plague lay in their beds as the world unravels.  Pregnancy becomes illegal, schools turn into care centers, the extinction of the human race is on the horizon.   Seems like things couldnt possibly be worse.  Wrong.  Ten years after the initial outbreak, all of the children awaken with dark eyes and bad attitudes - like zombies (im sure the resemblance isnt accidental) - and the battle for survival begins.

If youre still interested in this story, I emplore you to go back to your bedroom, lay down and go to sleep.  Perhaps you will dream of a film where Clive Barker is more in creative control.  Maybe you'll dream of a plague, and, oh I don't know - you'll care who lives and dies.  Maybe you'll even be scared, that the human race is facing extinction, and that 1000 angry, soul hungry children are searching for your broken neck.  Thats your best chance at anything here, because this movie just falls flat on its face.

Its hard to believe I know.  A Clive Barker movie?  Well, Clive's not directing it.  Worse off, his only apparent involvment in this project is that he is one of about 15 producers that financed or envisioned this monster.  So its just a marketing ploy.   Worked on me.  Don't let it sell you.

The film begins quite briskly - perhaps in an attempt to whisk you up into the unexplained calamity and throw you off balance.  The children drop, foam at the mouth, and from that night on, have seizures at 10am and 10pm for ten years until they reawaken.  Where did this plague come from?  Why do they have seizures?  Who are these characters Im about to follow?  There's no time for answers.  The children are suddenly awake, and anyone over the age of 18 is being slaughtered.

Why are they being killed?  How can a movie have the ingredients of something that sounds great on paper, but suck so bad on the screen?  There are no answers to any of it.  The Plague is a robotic and emotionless ride into a two dimensional world where you'd think you'd be interested, but aren't.  There's a high body count, mass death, pretty much a global genocide - but none of this arouses any excitement, instills any sense of dread, or offers a single crimson lining of self-indulgent satisfaction.

Final analysis:   Dawson Creek fans may float this - and Clive's name will certainly earn the producers their investments back - but horror fans will be left hungry and unamused.  You could say this is a really bad, colorless and excitementless shadow of 2004's Dawn of the Dead and be right.  Someone somewhere already coined the term Yawn of the Dead - and sadly enough, its accurate.  Its got mass murder, Clive's name, Dawson Creek's James Van Der Beek, an apocalyptic plot...  However, if you feel the stirrings of an emerging debate, with thoughts like, "Its got to be better than he's saying,"  in your head...  Trust me - its not.  Seasoned veterans of the genre - avoid this one like the plague.